The Con­sulate in Lit­tle Rock pro­vides ser­vices to the state of Arkansas, the Western part of Ten­nessee and East­ern Ok­la­homa.

“We come to Ok­la­homa twice a month and it is not nearly enough,” said the Con­sul.

The most typ­i­cal pro­ce­dures is­sued by the mo­bile and the wheel con­sulate are the re­newal of pass­ports and ma­tric­ula con­sulares, and the is­suance of birth cer­tifi­cates and vot­ing cre­den­tials.

“In or­der to vote in Mex­ico you need an elec­tor cre­den­tial. To is­sue it the cit­i­zen has to bring a valid ID with a pho­to­graph, a birth cer­tifi­cate and an ad­dress cer­tifi­cate that shows the per­son is cur­rently re­sid­ing in Ok­la­homa,” ex­plained the con­sul, adding that all th­ese pa­pers are later sent to the elec­toral com­mis­sion in Mex­ico which is­sues the vot­ing cre­den­tial and sends it to the per­sonal ad­dress of the cit­i­zen. This is not the case with the is­suance of ma­tric­ula con­sulares, which can only be ob­tained per­son­ally at the Con­sulate.

Even though the Con­sul has worked hard to as­sist the lo­cal Mex­i­cans and speed up some bu­reau­cracy pro­cesses, com­plaints are al­ways trendy: peo­ple say the con­sulate does not come of­ten to the City, that the pro­ce­dures take very long, that the queues are long. But the most im­por­tant prob­lem is that there are a lot of Mex­i­cans in the state with no doc­u­ments at all.

“There are a lot of peo­ple that can­not at­test they are Mex­i­cans, and we have thou­sands that claim to be so and are not and present fake doc­u­ments,” Quilantán said. “Those who ef­fec­tively are Mex­i­cans need a lot of help to is­sue a valid ID, and ev­ery state in the USA has a Mex­i­can im­mi­gra­tion of­fice to as­sist them.”

The ones that don’t have valid Mex­i­can doc­u­ments need to ask a rel­a­tive back in Mex­ico to go to the mu­nic­i­pal author­ity with two wit­nesses to get a let­ter of mu­nic­i­pal iden­tity in which the mu­nic­i­pal author­ity cer­ti­fies the iden­tity of the in­di­vid­ual. Once the Mex­i­can con­sulate ob­tains that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion it can is­sue a ma­tric­ula con­sular.

In times of big­otry, de­por­ta­tions and anti-im­mi­gra­tion feel­ings, the Con­sulate seems busier than ever, but Quilan­tan is solid about his bond with the lo­cal po­lice and the sher­iff’s of­fice, even if some­times they are just meant to dis­agree.

“Ev­ery day we re­ceive let­ters of peo­ple say­ing they were con­victed for a crime they didn’t do. The prob­lem is that once a per­son con­fesses a crime, the con­fes­sion is im­pos­si­ble to undo,” stated the con­sul. “We know there are cer­tain au­thor­i­ties in­side the dis­trict at­tor­ney’s of­fice that said to the of­fend­ers ‘ if you de­clare your­self guilty they will give you 2 or 3 years in­stead of 15 to 20, and our coun­try­men, out of ig­no­rance, sign. That is when the fam­i­lies start call­ing the con­sulate, send­ing let­ters.”

Quilan­tan added that gen­er­ally po­lice au­thor­i­ties tend to be more be­nign than the sher­iff’s deputies when deal­ing with the un­doc­u­mented.

“When a Mex­i­can is de­tained by the po­lice he shows them the ma­tric­ula con­sular and some may give him a warn­ing and oth­ers may de­cide not to rec­og­nize the doc­u­ment as a valid ID and that’s the end of it. The sher­iff’s of­fice has dif­fer­ent re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, they have to de­tain the un­doc­u­mented, process their files and send them to ICE,” said the Con­sul about the lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Quilantán knows a lot of peo­ple are get­ting de­ported and con­sid­ers preven­tion a must to pro­tect the His­panic com­mu­nity in town.

“We have to tell our cit­i­zens that they need to pay at­ten­tion. If ICE comes knock­ing at their doors they are al­lowed to say no, they can de­cide not to open those doors, they have the right to re­main si­lent,” the Con­sul ex­plained. “What we need to do as a com­mu­nity is avoid all kinds of trou­ble. If you are go­ing to drive, ver­ify the lights of your car. Re­mem­ber racial pro­fil­ing ex­ists, even if au­thor­i­ties refuse to rec­og­nize it, dis­crim­i­na­tion ex­ists. Please try to re­spect the speed lim­its, be­cause speed ex­cess can lead to de­por­ta­tions and the break­ing up of fam­i­lies. The Mex­i­can Con­sulate has a pre­ven­tive role, we have the obli­ga­tion of en­cour­ag­ing our cit­i­zens to re­spect the law. So, if you want to go out and drink some spir­its do it, but do not drive.”

Quilantán ex­pressed some worry for his coun­try­men.

“Peo­ple live with anx­i­ety, they have de­pres­sion, stress. We lis­ten to in­cred­i­ble sto­ries, peo­ple that have to go shop­ping at night be­cause they are afraid of the law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties,” a sit­u­a­tion than only de­stroys the bond between the po­lice and the im­mi­grants and that does not con­trib­ute in the fight against crime.

“Dear coun­try­men, try to re­spect the laws and the lo­cal or­di­nances,” Quilan­tan urged. “A ma­jor­ity of us are in this coun­try with no in­vi­ta­tion, and we need to re­mem­ber we are all am­bas­sadors of Mex­ico, we are here to work and be­come a part of the com­mu­nity.” (La Se­m­ana)